An open research practice
for partnership operators.
Most partnership research is vendor-funded, proprietary, or anecdotal. BlueThread publishes transparent, open-methodology research that operators can inspect, challenge, and build upon.
Help build the industry's first open benchmark for modern partnership organizations.
7 minutes · results publish August 2026 · respondents get the data first.
Current research
State of Partnerships 2026: Where AI Earns Trust and Where It Stops
105 starts, 78 completed responses from partner practitioners. 94% already use AI, and roughly half still won't approve a deal registration without a human checking the work.
State of the Partner Operations Role - Q3 2026
81 hand-coded job descriptions, reviewed by three practitioner leaders. Five archetypes, a proposed maturity framework, and a compensation cross-cut.
The New Economics of Ecosystems
A 14-episode research series on how partnership economics are being rewritten: who creates value, who captures it, and who gets paid.
AI Partner Program Index - Edition 1
Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have committed more than $1B to partner ecosystems in five months. Scored on one seven-dimension framework.
State of the Partner Manager Role - 2026
121 US tech job descriptions analyzed for compensation, AI fluency, archetypes, equity, and program scope.
Partner Intelligence: Anthropic vs OpenAI
A side-by-side read of how the two frontier-model vendors are building partner ecosystems - programs, motions, attach, and where each is winning.
The Benchmark Was Wrong: What AI-Native Partnerships Actually Requires
Hours saved is the wrong benchmark. The three bars AI has to clear before partnerships becomes a real revenue function.
The Partner Reset: It's Already Happening
Field research on how the co-sell layer is being rebuilt - and the diagnostic that scores where your program sits today.
Coming research
A rolling roadmap of the studies we're scoping, fielding, or writing. Subscribe below to be notified when each ships.
AI in Partnerships
How partnership teams are deploying - and gating - AI across sourcing, co-sell, and attribution.
Partner Compensation Benchmark
Base, variable, and quota structures for PMs, CSMs, and channel AEs across ARR bands.
Co-Sell Benchmark
Sourced vs. influenced ratios, cycle times, and win rates across hyperscaler and ISV motions.
- Ecosystem Technology Stack · Q4 2026
- Marketplace Adoption Report · Q1 2027
- Partner Productivity Index · Q2 2027
Public methodology
Every report ships with a written methodology document - what we measured, how we measured it, and what we excluded.
Published dataset
The underlying data table is downloadable so readers can rerun the analysis, dispute a number, or extend the work.
Disclosed AI assistance
Where AI helped with research, drafting, or synthesis, we say so.
AI-assisted where noted. All methodology and editorial judgments are BlueThread's.
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